With the development of internet communication technologies, an increasing number of terminal devices (e.g., “terminals”) become available to customers. Such terminals may include, for example, home gateways, set-top boxes, or other devices.
The number of terminals increases rapidly together with the development of Internet of Things technologies. When a large number of terminals need updates, the update files need to be downloaded first for each terminal.
A method currently employed for downloading the update files is illustrated in FIG. 1, where a server sends a download request (Download) to each terminal that is connected with the server. After receiving the download request, each terminal downloads the file from the server, and then informs the server that the download is successful.
The aforementioned update file download method can have one or more of the following problems: 1. The server may be overloaded by the excessive update requests as each terminal sends the update requests to the same server. 2. When the large number of update files are transmitted from the server to each terminal, problems such as network jamming may occur due to the insufficient bandwidths of the terminals.